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Saturday, May 9, 2015 – 1:15 PM – Troutdale Trading Post

Don’t miss a tour of Troutdale, Virginia, the highest incorporated town in Virginia and the first town in Virginia to have a female mayor!

Learn about: buildings that still stand and buildings that are no longer there; the trains, train station, and train tracks that are gone; the chartering of Troutdale in 1906. Listen to tidbits from stories by Sherwood Anderson, a nationally known author and Troutdale’s most famous resident. See copies of photographs from various times in Troutdale’s history. Spend about 3 hours of your Saturday afternoon and become an expert on the history of a really neat town.

MORE INFO

QUESTIONS
Have questions or need more information? Contact the tour guide, Ed Clayton at veclayton@gmail.com or call Ed at 919-467-1082.

Michael McFadyen Scuba Diving Web Site

New River at the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System site

National Committee for the New River

General JEB Stuart SCV Camp 1598

The Appalachian Power Company Along the New River: The Defeat of the Blue Ridge Project in Historical Perspective by Robert Seth Woodard Jr.

The North Carolina Society of Historians awarded several honors to the Alleghany Historical – Genealogical Society, Saturday, October 19 at its annual Awards Banquet in Mooresville, North Carolina.

AHGS won a Joe M. McLauren Newsletter Award for our quarterly newsletter and a Paul Green Multi Media Award for our program: Alleghany Memories- five episodes that featured Jeanette Anders, Pauline Meals,  Walter Bell, the New Haven Quilters and the History of Alleghany Cares.

Alleghany Memories won an additional Paul Green Award for four episodes produced in collaboration with the  Marine Corps League, Walter Frank Osborne, Jr. Detachment 1298, that featured local USMC veterans, Bobby Irwin, J.T. Pardue, Bill Sebastion and Charles Pugh.

Alleghany Memories is available for viewing any time at www.actv.me.

Of 81 eligible nominations, 22 projects were awarded Paul Green Awards and of 20 eligible nominations, 7 won Joe M. McLauren newsletter awards.

Thank you to the NCSH, its Board and the Judges for these honors!

A Tribute to President Kennedy was written in 1963 by J.D. Higgins, Jr. to memorialize the fallen President and featured J.D. Higgins (Vocal), James Billings (Guitar), C. Ray Billings (Auto Harp), Paul Wooten (Bass).

This is just one of the items that were on display in the Alleghany Historical Museum for the exhibit on Mountain Music called These Hills are Alive with Music. If you have items that illustrate our common heritage, consider loaning them to the museum. More participation means more diversity, more education and more fun! The upcoming exhibit will be called Mountain Manufacturing: A History of Big Business in the Blue Ridge and will feature the factories that once operated in our area and will last through February of 2014. If you have items that you think would be appropriate,  bring them for display!

At right- Western Regional Archivist, Heather South (center) with Government Records Section Head, Becky McGee-Lankford (left) and State Archivist Sarah Koonts (right) at the opening of the Western Regional Archives.

If you missed the July meeting of AHGS, you missed a doozy. Heather South of the Western Regional Archives spoke about her job and the importance of proper storage and archiving techniques. Sounds dry as dust, right?

Absolutely the opposite. Heather is an enthusiastic (and fun!) speaker who gives technical information in a way even I can understand it. She says- as she holds up a giant 10″ bug- “People remember more with visuals. You’ll more easily remember what I say about pest prevention when you remember the lady with the bug.” When talking about the proper handling of documents or museum artifacts she wears a huge pair of Mickey Mouse gloves.

But, don’t let the silliness fool you. She gave us tons of practical information in her presentation. Like: People store things in boxes everywhere, in barns, basements and storage units. And tiny bugs love to make nests inside the corrugated cardboard of the boxes! So, as a rule, she isolates donations and re-boxes everything into clean, new cartons for storage at the archives.

And: Get your photos out of those magic magnetic photo albums (with the clear plastic sheet over the adhesive cardboard.) They aren’t acid-free and will slowly kill your photos instead of preserving them. Smell a photo album before you buy it for a “plastic-y” odor. If it has that beach ball smell, don’t buy it. The smell means the plastic is giving off gasses that will react with your photos. Heather claims she is “on security camera tapes all over the Carolinas smelling photo albums.”

And: Manilla folders and standard copy paper are generally “neutral” and therefore, safe for storing prints and documents.

We originally met Heather at a Museums in Partnership (MIP) meeting in Ashe County hosted by Ramona Renfroe and the Museum of Ashe County History. MIP is the brain child of Jill Jones, who was Director of the Swannanoa Valley Museum for ten years and is now Director of Marketing & Communications at Blue Ridge National Heritage Area. MIP has been a valuable resource for us, giving us access to a network of area museum professionals for information and advice. Thanks, Ramona and Jill for inviting AHGS to the group!

And THANKS HEATHER, for a fun and informative presentation. Please plan to come back to Alleghany soon!